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The Cucumber Book: Behaviour-Driven Development for Testers and Developers

For Immediate Release: January 27, 2012

Customers want rock-solid, bug-free software that does exactly what they expect it to do. Yet they can’t always articulate their ideas clearly enough for developers to turn their ideas into code.

The Cucumber Book: Behaviour-Driven Development for Testers and Developers (Pragmatic Bookshelf, $30.00) shows you how to develop using Cucumber: it’s a testing, communication, and requirements tool all rolled into one.

Authors Matt Wynne and Aslak Hellesøy show you how to express your customers’ wild ideas as a set of clear, executable specifications that everyone on the team can read.

You can use Cucumber to test almost any system, from a simple shell script or Perl script, to web applications written in PHP, Java, or any platform.

In Part 1 of The Cucumber Book, you’ll get started by using the core features of Cucumber and working with Cucumber’s Gherkin DSL to describe—in plain language—the behavior your customers want from the system. Then you’ll write Ruby code that interprets those plain-language specifications and checks them against your application. If you’re new to Cucumber, this part of the book will teach you everything you need to know to get started.

In Part 2, you’ll consolidate the knowledge you’ve gained with a worked example, where you’ll learn more advanced Cucumber techniques. You’ll also learn how to test asynchronous systems and systems that use a database.

In Part 3, you’ll find a selection of recipes for some of the most difficult and commonly seen situations the authors have helped teams solve. With these patterns and techniques, you’ll learn how to test Ajax-heavy web applications with Capybara and Selenium, REST web services, Ruby on Rails applications, command-line applications, legacy applications, and more.

Written by the creator of Cucumber and one of its most experienced users and contributors, The Cucumber Book is an authoritative guide that will give you and your team all the knowledge you need to start using Cucumber with confidence.

Available in epub, mobi, and PDF direct from the publisher and in paperback from fine bookstores worldwide.

What People are Saying

“Few tools have managed to bridge the developer-customer divide as well as Cucumber has. Cucumber is not a tool for testing applications. Cucumber is a philosophy for communicating requirements. This book brings that philosophy to life.”
—Robert C. Martin (Uncle Bob)

“I devoured the Cucumber book… what a gift. I recommend this book to everyone working with Cucumber.”
—J. B. Rainsberger, Author, JUnit Recipes

“Reading this book is like having Aslak and Matt sitting next to you, patiently helping you through your first project with Cucumber.”
—George Dinwiddie, Software development coach, iDIA Computing, LLC

Additional Resources

Sample chapters, table of contents, and more information is available on the book’s home page.

About Pragmatic Bookshelf

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